AMHVoices:Probe Chinamasa’s raids on RBZ

The debilitating cash crunch that bank depositors are facing is a clear indication of a broader economic crisis, which President Robert Mugabe’s regime is facing and is in large part responsible for. It further exposes the failure of the Zanu PF government to craft and implement policies which would spur economic recovery since 2013.

Vince Musewe,PDP secretary for finance and economic affairs

What is also very evident from the current liquidity crunch is that Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa is raiding the coffers of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) to finance various obligations of the regime such as salaries.

This is because revenue collected by Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has been dwindling continuously since 2013 and, thus, there is little available to fund the operations of the desperate government.

With Zimbabwe in a deep economic crisis, most banks are struggling to provide cash and limiting daily withdrawal amounts for individuals and companies. Most ATMs have since run out of cash as the banks try to contain the cash crunch and reserve cash only for their customers.

What a desperate Chinamasa is doing will lead Zanu PF to reintroduce the worthless Zimbabwean dollar so that they print their way out of the current quagmire. This is what the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has long warned against and an increasingly desperate Mugabe is likely to cross the Rubicon and reintroduce the moribund currency and the bond coins have set the ground for this madness.

It is time for Chinamasa to realise that the financial and economic reforms that he has been embarking on since 2013 will not materialise because of his party’s reluctance to realign the existing national laws to the new Constitution. It is also time for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to realise that the Zanu PF government is not sincere on reforms and, thus, it would be futile to give them any bailout.

Desperate for cash, the Zanu PF regime has been window-dressing the reform process to please international monetary institutions in the hope of accessing cash that it so desperately needs, but they seem not satisfied with
Zanu PF’s commitment on reforms and Chinamasa has resorted to raiding RBZ coffers.

As the PDP, we request Parliament and the government auditor-general to conduct urgent inquiries into what is happening in the financial sector and at the RBZ. Failure to undertake these investigations would only lead to a huge disaster for the sector and would plunge the entire banking sector into a huge crisis.

With the current Dollarisation System what coffers does RBZ have for Chinamasa to raid? Is RBZ retaining any export proceeds? Since RBZ does not have forex reserves and does not print USD it is not clear what forex reserves RBZ might for the National Treasury to raid. The writer must explain what Chinamasa is doing to RBZ. Its no secret that RBZ is 100% owned by GOZ and dividends declared are paid to Treasury.